Meet The Brave Lab Team
The faces and folks you will work with.
Jess Hayden
Jess is an organisational psychologist with an insatiable curiosity for helping people solve problems at work. She’s felt very lucky and privileged to have been able to follow her curiosity throughout her professional life and this has lead to a certain mastery of the career u-turn over many years and many changes. She’s done consulting in a large professional services firm, worked on organisational design in several Irish NGOs, set up a learning function in a tech startup in Berlin and developed academic programmes in Universities. The one u-turn that’s held her curiosity for the longest has been setting up a business with Lucy to bring a unique brand of learning, innovation and strategy consulting to their clients across the globe. Jess loves working with and admires people who are attempting something that’s never been done before and how she can help them have their best chance of success.
Jess has a BA in Psychology and an MSc in Organisational Psychology which gives her a strong evidence-base to work with in terms of understanding humans at work. She continues to follow her research interests in behavioural neuropsychology, creative thinking, high-pressure decision making and problem-solving.
“I’ve always thought that organisations have an incredible opportunity to be a crucial part of our global environmental recovery. It’s going to take all of us, performing at our best and supporting each other to achieve environmental stability. The outcome for organisations is that they will not only survive, but they will stay relevant, adaptable, exciting and rewarding places to work. No organisation will ever face a greater challenge than what is to come and I want to support them with that. Lucy and I are hyper-focused on using what we know about how organisations and people work to help make the transitions necessary for thriving people and planet.”
“One of the reason I have such an optimistic outlook on what people can achieve with the right support is because I have firsthand experience of the potential we all have to overcome challenges. I have had a debilitating medical phobia my whole life and which had prevented me from becoming a mum. With the right support and interventions, I overcame this phobia which resulted in the birth of my beautiful daughter in 2018. This is something I really never thought I could do. But, the human brain is incredible, the potential we all have for change and adaptation is there for all of us. I know we can overcome incredible challenges, if we do it together.”
I want everyone to be brave enough to use whatever power and privilege they may have, to build a better world.
Lucy McKenna
Lucy is a Learning specialist, facilitator & coach, with a focus on innovation & change. She has extensive experience designing impactful learning programmes and facilitating organisations to tackle challenges in innovative ways. She has developed her skills over the last 20 years working across Learning & Development, Account Management, and Product Management, in organisations such as Google, Eircom and Aer Lingus, She also spent 5 years running own Learning & development consultancy, Full Aeon. Lucy has an MA in Interactive Media Design, a degree in Business Studies and is a certified coach. She also lecturers in Innovation, creativity & entrepreneurship in both TCD & UCD. If you want to engage Lucy in an animated discussion, talk to her about the future, and the opportunities it holds for us to become truly human beings as opposed to human doings!
“For as long as I can remember, I have been referred to as a “bit of hippy”, I like alternative ideas, I wear colourful clothes, I rally against injustice and since hearing about the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980’s I have been a advocate for protecting our environment. The other part of me however, the daughter, granddaughter and niece of small business owners, is enterprising and quite frankly, a capitalist (of sorts). These 2 parts of me have always felt contrary to each other…..until now. As part of The Brave Lab, I get to use my skills as a facilitator and my experience working in large innovative organisations to help people do hard things, to take brave steps and tackle some of the most challenging issues organisations (and the world) face today. I get to be both enterprising AND indulge my “hippy” side. “
Leaving Google after 9 years. I recognise I was in a very privileged position that I could do this, it was still incredibly difficult. Google had become very much part of my identity, and it took time to learn who I was without it. There is a line in the spoken word piece, “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives” by the artist Prince EA, “sometimes you gotta leap, and grow your wings on the way down”, this is how it felt for me leaving, the fear of not growing those wings was very real. But, I did it, I was brave, I took the leap, and it has led to wonderful new roads I never expected to go down.
An equitable world, where all human beings can be who they truly are, and have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive.
Become a collaborator
We need great people to do great work - could that be you?
At The Brave Lab our purpose is to realise fairer futures where people and planet can thrive. if you believe ouor missions could be aligned, please get in touch! Send us an email to hello@thebravelab.com, and let us know why you would like to join us and what you can bring. Note that we are a fully remote organisation but can be required to do work onsite with clients sometimes.
